Levi's Announces New Forest Product Policy

Asia Pulp and Paper is having a hard time holding onto customers these days. With the release of its forest products purchasing policy, Levi Strauss & Company has become the latest major brand to ban business with Asia Pulp and Paper (APP). This comes on the heels of a major public cancellation with APP affiliate Mercury Paper at the end of December by Kroger, America’s largest grocery chain.

So why is everyone running from APP?

APP has a nasty penchant for clearcutting Indonesia’s rainforests and disrespecting communities’ rights — and these abuses are proving to be bad for business. Despite the company’s deep pockets for slick PR greenwash campaigns, its tactics aren’t fooling a lot of customers. Over the past several years, a growing list of major companies have dropped their contracts with APP, including major US book publishers Scholastic, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster, leading toy companies Mattel, Hasbro and Lego, fashion giants Gucci and Tiffany and Co., and office supply stores Staples and Office Depot.

Levi’s new global policy not only excludes controversial fiber supplies linked to rainforest destruction (like that from APP), it also proactively maximizes the best environmental fibers available. For paper, it mandates that all paper purchased by the company be at least 30% post-consumer recycled content, with a goal of 100% whenever possible. When post-consumer recycled is not available, wood fiber must be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Levi’s and other responsible corporate customers are implementing forward-looking policies that maximize the best environmental fiber and eliminate controversial sources. Meanwhile, reform for APP’s clearcutting ways still seems to be in the distant future. For the time being, it’s hard to imagine this list of APP customer cancellations doing anything but growing.

Asia Pulp and Paper is perhaps the world's largest rainforest destroyer

As Rainforest Action Network (RAN) continues our negotiations with The Walt Disney Company to secure a comprehensive paper policy that would exclude rainforest destruction from the company’s products, we are also keeping our eyes on the real prize: reforming logging giant and Indonesian rainforest destroyer Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).

APP has been called “one of the most destructive companies on the planet” by UK Guardian reporter George Monbiot, and now the shadowy logging behemoth is busy pursuing aggressive expansion plans into North American markets, including buying up a slew of paper mills in Canada. While RAN has been tracking the company’s trail of destruction for years, the first time many Americans heard of APP was in a front page New York Times piece last March.

RAN and our allies have been working hard to make sure it would not be the last time Americans hear about APP and its destructive ways. Over the past years, a steady stream of major corporate customers have dropped their contracts with APP, including major US book publishers Scholastic, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster; leading toy companies Mattel, Hasbro, and Lego; and fashion giants Gucci and Tiffany and Co. As the APP brand becomes ever more closely associated with the rainforest destruction and human rights abuses the company causes, more and more corporate customers are realizing the danger of doing business with such a toxic supplier.

As public awareness rises about the massive scale and reckless pace of logging by APP and its subsidiaries, the company has been forced to respond. But, instead of acknowledging and addressing the social conflict and deforestation it is responsible for, APP has chosen to invest heavily in public relations firms to polish its image and distract consumers from the growing controversy.

The result is a sophisticated, Orwellian, internationally orchestrated effort of smoke and mirrors that refines the old art of corporate greenwashing to masterpiece levels. When the World Wildlife Fund called APP’s logging one of the leading threats to the survival of the Sumatran Tiger, APP’s brazen response was to run ads in the NYT claiming “APP Cares” and is working hard to protect tiger habitat.

There is simply too much shocking hypocrisy and doublespeak in APP’s recent playbook to cover adequately here, so interested readers will need to stay tuned for more to come from RAN on this matter — but if you have the stomach for it, this TV ad from last summer is particularly nauseating.

APP’s approach to infiltrating North American markets has been to become adept at operating under the guise of a wide array of innocuous-seeming front companies that shroud the company’s products from its contaminated brand name. These shell companies, with names like Eagle Ridge Paper, Global Paper Solutions Inc., Solaris Paper, and Mercury Paper, are expanding throughout the US and Canada, and many customers have no idea they are actually buying from APP.

RAN looks forward to the day when accountability and socially and environmentally responsible sourcing replace today’s subterfuge and false claims of sustainability. We will be counting on you to help us get there.

RAN's Toyo Kawakami Organizes a Rare Public Protest in Japan Against Rainforest Destruction

This October marks the sixth anniversary of the opening of Rainforest Action Network’s Japan office, spearheaded by our Tokyo-based, activist-ambassador Toyo Kawakami.

Toyo began working for RAN in 2005, campaigning to convince large Japanese paper companies and retailers to stop buying wood chips linked to the destruction of Tasmania’s old growth forests sold by Australian timber giant Gunns Limited.  Gunns was the target of widespread opposition in Tasmania due to its clear-cutting of priceless and irreplaceable ancient eucalyptus groves.

Toyo’s efforts to educate large corporate buyers and Japanese banks, arrange Japanese delegation visits to Tasmania, secure contract cancellations, and wrangle media attention added significant pressure to a global campaign that achieved a major victory in 2010 when Gunns Ltd agreed to pull out of native forest logging altogether.

Toyo has now turned his sights to Indonesia, as RAN takes on an even larger and more intractable forest destroyer: Asia Pulp and Paper (APP). Japan is one of the world’s leading markets for paper products, where the use of fiber from Indonesia’s endangered rainforests is rapidly expanding.

Askul, the largest Japanese buyer of APP products, is estimated to purchase over 100,000 tons of paper from APP each year, a contract worth over US$100 million annually. Askul’s president has a reputation for caring about climate change, and the company already has a decent paper policy, but the relationship with APP makes it clear that the company’s paper policy is not being carefully applied. APP papers have possibly the highest carbon footprint in the world due to APP’s use of wood fiber from rainforest destruction and because the company’s pulp plantations are often planted on highly carbon-emissive peat soils.

Toyo Meets With Executives in Japan

In part, Askul is relying on the Indonesian Ecolabel Institute (LEI) to certify that the paper it buys is environmentally and socially responsible. But LEI fails to ensure that all of the areas it certifies are maintaining high conservation values, respecting community rights, and are free of social conflict. Furthermore, the fact that both APP and Indonesia’s other leading logging giant and rainforest destroyer, APRIL, sits on its board of directors raises serious questions about whether LEI is independent.

Toyo is working with Askul to begin implementation of its existing policy. This involves encouraging the company to push APP to stop further conversion of natural forests into plantations and to resolve social conflicts created by the company — or risk losing Askul’s very lucrative business.

Japanese culture around environmentalism, business relationships, and conflict is very different than here in the United States, and as a result Toyo is constantly challenged to adapt RAN’s style of market campaigning in ways that can lead to effective outcomes in Japan.

Toyo’s hurdles may be huge, but his track record of talented tenacity and patient perseverance points toward success. RAN is proud to be represented by Toyo as the rainforest’s man in Japan, and we look forward to keeping RAN supporters updated as his work progresses.

RAN forest campaigner Lafcadio Cortesi talks with elders of the village of Siabu in central Sumatra

It’s a good thing RAN’s forest campaigner, Lafcadio Cortesi, speaks Bahasa Indonesian so well. Otherwise I almost certainly would have gotten in the car with the undercover intelligence agent who told me to come with him because he “wanted to practice his English.”

We had just arrived in the small village of Siabu, in the Kampar region of east central Sumatra. Our plan was to meet up with a group of displaced villagers and participate in a land reclamation and planting party. The villagers are engaged in a land conflict with a subsidiary of pulp and paper giant APP, and their plan was to plant crops on their traditional lands and prevent the company from further establishing a pulpwood plantation in the disputed area.

Of the dozens of men milling about when we got out of the car, the first to approach me began asking questions about who I was with, what I was doing there, and the like. It quickly became apparent that the whole group was loading onto their motor bikes and moving to a less public location and we were to follow. We were all meant to meet up at the same place, so I was contemplating jumping in with my gregarious new friend, but Lafcadio said, curtly, “No. Travel with us.”

Not generally a curt fellow, Laf explained when we got in the car that our hosts were concerned the mystery guy was there to gather intelligence, though for whom he was gathering it was not quite clear. This was the first of many lessons and insights I gained that day into just how deeply dark and deranged the situation here has become.

Getting to the designated meeting place required hours of travel on a labyrinth of dirt roads through a 250,000 acre acacia plantation that stretched across the land like an infestation of neatly ordered rows of scrawny twigs. We were made to pass through several check points staffed by security personnel who sported the SOS corporate logo of their employer on a patch on one shoulder and a police badge on the other — a fitting display of the cozy relationship between the security state and the corporations whose interests they serve.

Lafcadio with customary elder Pak Datuk

At the second security post we picked up the Tokoh Adat, or customary elder of the local village, a man called Pak Datuk. The armed guards took the identification cards of our driver and Pak Datuk for safe keeping — and so they’d have leverage over the drive and Pak Datuk if anything untoward were to occur beyond the gate.

The gathering place was a promontory at the edge of the plantation overlooking a post-apocalyptic landscape cleared of all vegetation and scarred by a maze of roads leading nowhere. Later we would learn this spot was chosen because it is within the villagers’ ancestral territory, and is an area they hope to reclaim. It had been decided no planting would occur this day, but a meeting would proceed to discuss community goals and next steps.

About a hundred people had gathered, and our arrival created quite a stir. Half of the group surrounded us and jockeyed with one another to shake our hands and have their pictures taken with us, after which it was insisted that we eat. The group included pockets of animated young men smoking clove cigarettes and blaring pop music from mobile phones, elderly women wearing headscarves, and lots of adult men wearing the weathered look of hard-working farmers whose fortune had not come easily.

In the tense environment of present day rural Sumatran society, the simple act of gathering together on disputed territory is an act of resistance, and the day’s meeting did not go unnoticed. In addition to the undercover character we had met earlier, a group of armed law enforcement personnel — including private security, police officers, and at least one quasi-military looking gentleman — had amassed on the outskirts of the villagers’ assembly.

When Pak Datuk stood to speak, everyone circled and fell silent. He spoke with the elegance and authority of a strong and self-assured leader. From the bits whispered to me in translation I understood that he began by stating that his people are bound by three laws. In order, they are God, custom, and then the government. He said the goal of his people is to take action to reclaim their land rights and ancestral territory.

He said his people were given rights by their ancestors and that it is their duty to protect those rights so they can be passed on to their children before they are lost. He said they are bound to be peaceful, to be safe and not to use violence. He said it is crucial they maintain their unity in the face of those who would divide them. He finished each series of pronouncements with the question “Ingat?” (Remember?) or Mengar ti? (Do you understand?) to which the crowd in unison responded “Ingat!” or “Mengar ti!”

A canal cuts through a former village site and elephant habitat

When he was finished speaking, other village leaders spoke and details were discussed about what to plant and how to collect and distribute funds to make the provocative planting project possible. When the group disbanded, we drove away with an older, well-dressed village member named Pak Sudirman who guided us to the site a few miles away where their original village stood.

As we passed through a sea of sterile oil palm plantations, crudely dug canals and dry, exposed earth, he told us how rich this land had once been, not so long ago. Before his people were forcibly evicted by the military in the late 1980’s, their riverside territory had been habitat for elephants and monkeys, and his village practiced a sustainable form of mixed agroforestry that included crops like rubber trees, cassava, banana, chile, papaya, durien, mango, rambutan, jack fruit and a variety of vegetables.

In a darkly ironic twist, the only natural forest still standing in the area was saved because it was made part of a military bombing range. Entering this verdant forest felt like a full sensory massage. The sight of the towering trees, the feel of the moist air, the smell of dank richness, the sound of birdsong and the buzz of insects stood in stark contrast to the vacuous devastation just outside.

Back at the village where the day began, we shared smokes with the village’s men in the home of the traditional village chief. Pak Datuk told us in clear and passionate terms what the demands of his people are for APP, the company behind their conflict. He said the company never asked for their permission to use the land that belongs to them and they have never received any benefit. His demand is for APP to return the land to the community. He followed by asking that customers of APP stop buying products that come from their lands until the important issues of their traditional rights are resolved.

Laf speaks with the village's chief

The stories of these people and this place are a microcosm of what’s happening all over Sumatra and  in Borneo and the rest of Indonesia and Malaysia. People are displaced, forests are cleared, ecosystems are destroyed. Repeat. And until APP and their ilk among the all-powerful logging behemoths are convinced that business as usual is not in their own or Indonesia’s interest, these injustices will continue. Our meetings this week with allies and community leaders are a piece in the growth of a larger movement that is gaining momentum here and at home in the US. Companies like APP can no longer expect to act with impunity.

Two weeks ago Greenpeace International released a YouTube video detailing how pulped rainforest trees are ending up in the packaging of toys sold all over the world.  The video begins, “We got to wondering…who is using all the rainforest that is being destroyed in Indonesia?” The sad truth is that the answer to Greenpeace’s question is me, you, and probably our friends and family.

Greenpeace’s investigations revealed that several famous toy companies, including Mattel, Lego, Hasbro, and Disney, are using fiber from cleared Indonesian rainforests in the packaging for Barbies, Cinderella dolls, Transformers, Star Wars games, and more.

Two major pulp and paper companies, Asia Pulp and Paper and APRIL, are clearcutting Indonesia’s rainforests and replacing them with monoculture acacia plantations to make cheap paper for all sorts of consumer products. Last year, RAN discovered that fiber from Indonesia’s rainforests and the acacia plantations replacing them was also ending up in children’s books sold in the U.S., and in March we launched a campaign demanding that Disney, the world’s largest children’s book and magazine publisher, get Indonesian rainforest destruction out of all its paper products.

It’s absurd that children’s books, Barbie boxes and other paper products are driving the destruction of some of the world’s most biologically diverse rainforests, and it’s infuriating that everyday people are being made into unwitting participants in this travesty.

TAKE ACTION

Join the global campaign to tell APP and APRIL that enough is enough. It’s time to stop destroying precious rainforests, abusing forest peoples’ rights and fueling climate change.

The report, titled Corruption, Land Conflict and Forest Destruction was released with the launch of RAN’s campaign to get the Walt Disney Company to stop using paper connected to rainforest destruction.

APP has a long history of corruption, political manipulation and aggressive expansion into new forests and new markets. The UK Guardian’s George Monbiot said the corporation may be “one of the most destructive companies on the planet.”

True to form, APP responded aggressively to the release of RAN’s case study detailing impacts on local communities and forests caused by APP’s deforestation. According to the Vancouver Sun on June 6, 2011, “APP responded to the RAN report by sending speedboats and helicopters to the remote community in Sumatra to question villagers.”

RAN’s main concern is for the communities and community members who have raised their voices to bring attention to the egregious actions of APP. Any intimidation and harassment of community members is unacceptable. RAN will continue to monitor the safety and security of our allies as we pursue our campaign goals of challenging the destructive practices of APP.

APP paid to promote its claims on an international business wire, alleging the community leaders featured in RAN’s report had disavowed their previous statements. RAN stands by the evidence and conclusions presented in the case study and challenges APP to address the substantive claims the case presents. In fact, National Public Radio’s program Living on Earth did a feature episode on deforestation and climate change in late 2009 in which they visited the same area featured in RAN’s report. Their coverage echo’s the content and conclusions put forward in RAN’s case study.

RAN has long recognized APP as one of the world’s most dangerous rainforest destroyers and has campaigned successfully to get leading companies including the Gucci Group, Simon & Schuster, International Paper, Tiffany & Co., Levi’s, Penguin/Pearson, and over 20 others to sever ties to APP and controversial Indonesian fiber. Perhaps APP’s distortion of facts and focus on RAN is evidence that the global campaign to may be getting under the company’s skin.

By its intimidating response, APP is avoiding the important questions about its operations raised by the report that it doesn’t want to answer. Is APP still clearing tiger habitat and other valuable natural forests and peatlands? Is APP respecting the free, prior and informed consent of communities to choose if their traditional lands become company controlled plantations? Are the people and environment better off than before the company came in? What are APP’s expansion plans and where is the fiber and money coming from to fuel its expansion?

APP’s response to RAN illustrates the company’s newfound sophistication in corporate double speak and over-the-top greenwashing. The company has hired slick pr firm Cohn and Wolfe and launched a vigorous drive to clean up its image through flowery words and visionary statements that would be comical if they did not conceal such a dark truth beneath.

For a preview of what we can expect to see more of as the global campaign to unmask APP continues to grow in scope and strength, visit the company’s new website, Rainforest Realities, perhaps the pinnacle of the companies Orwellian tactics to date. With categories like ‘biodiversity’ ‘carbon storage’ and my favorite, ‘people, planet, profit,’ we can see that APP is learning the language of sustainability. We can only hope they will soon be motivated enough to actually practice it.

Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is Indonesia's largest paper company and the fourth largest in the world. The clearing of rainforests and draining of peatlands in Indonesia has become a huge source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and it is largely driven by the pulp and paper industry.

It’s disappointing that Habitat for Humanity — a group I have a lot of admiration for — didn’t do its homework before partnering with Indonesia’s most destructive pulp and paper company, Asia Pulp and Paper.

Not only is Habitat getting used to fuel APP’s massive PR machine, but Habitat is soiling its own reputation and contradicting its values of integrity, upholding human rights, and addressing poverty by associating with a company that regularly bends the truth, undermines rights and grabs community land and livelihoods.

And this is not even to mention the immense negative impacts APP’s operations are having on Indonesia’s  forests, biodiversity and the climate. (The amount of carbon emissions resulting from APP’s operations is a subject the company has been thoroughly duplicitous about in the past — read our report in which we set the record straight about APP’s “hidden” emissions.)

From Scholastic and the Gucci Group to Office Depot and Staples, those companies that have looked into APP’s record and performance have seen fit to sever ties with the company. RAN urges Habitat for Humanity to research just who it’s dealing with in partnering with the likes of APP, and to find another partner that is consistent with its noble humanitarian mission.

RAN Interns Sleuthing Around... Shhh!

Fellow detectives and friends, it’s not every day you get to bust out your magnifying glass and scope out your local bookstore, but next week that is what over a thousand sleuths around the world will be doing.

What are these sleuths snooping out exactly?

Rainforest-safe books!

In honor of World Rainforest Week, over a thousand sleuths will be heading to bookstores around the country to research the recycled, post-consumer recycled and FSC-certified paper content of some of the most popular titles on bookstore shelves.

Can You Spot Tiki?

When rainforest-safe books (or books of paper made of destroyed rainforests) are detected, these sleuths will be uploading their findings into a rainforest-safe database.

You -and booklovers everywhere- will able to use this database as a consumer guide so that you can choose books that are rainforest-safe.

Now that’s something worth scoping out.

Want to sign up to be one of over a thousand of sleuths around the world? You can download a PDF packet and starting sleuthing today!

Kampar Peninsula: Photo Via Treehugger

Sinar Mas Group’s Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), Indonesia’s largest and most controversial logger, made another promise this week.

APP announced that one of the rainforest logging and conversion permits it controls (located in the globally significant peatland forests of the Sumatra’s Kampar Peninsula) will be re-licensed as a carbon conservation project.

However, given the lack local community or government involvement, the fact that the Industrial Timber Plantation license has yet to be reclassified as restoration or protected forest by government, and given the long timelines and lack of details associated with the deal, it remains to be seen if this is just another empty promise and public relations ploy by APP.

APP has a long history of broken commitments with communities, government, certification bodies, civil society and its customers.

Here’s my official statement:

The Kampar is among the deepest and most valuable peat forest ecosystems in the world. Not only does it provide carbon storage, it is customary land that supports the livelihoods of local communities and it serves as critical habitat for endangered Sumatran tigers and many other species. Although RAN hasn’t seen the details behind this announcement, it’s likely that the area in question should be illegal to clear in the first place. Any further development in this or other parts of the Kampar and neighboring peatlands and natural forests should certainly be subject to the moratorium on new licenses due to be adopted in January as part of the agreement on reducing deforestation and forest degradation between the Governments of Indonesia and Norway.
While we support the conservation of the Kampar, this project in no way makes up for the tremendous amount of damage that APP and its affiliates are having on communities rainforests and peatlands across Indonesia. This area represents a small proportion of the remaining natural forests and peatlands in their land bank and without action to protect other threatened areas in the Kampar and elsewhere, the area’s values could be lost and any emissions reductions rendered meaningless due to leakage.

APP’s conservation efforts are a drop in the bucket compared to the destruction that their standard business practices are causing across Indonesia. Under no circumstances should APP be praised or compensated for doing something that they should have been doing in the first place.

A critical question that needs to be answered in this situation, is whether or not local communities and governments know that this is happening and have a meaningful role in decision-making. If we don’t know that, it’s unclear where benefits will flow from this deal and how durable it will be. RAN maintains that if these types of conservation projects are to be successful, they must have the free, prior and informed consent of local communities and these communities must participate and receive an equitable share of the benefits.

What’s really good here is that the Ministry of Forests is stepping up to change the designation of this land use from “clear and convert” to “restore and protect.” If it’s done in the right way, involving communities and avoiding leakage, it could be an important precedent for Indonesia’s government.

If Indonesia is going to live up to their agreement with Norway, the government must re-designate licenses somehow and APP holds a lot of concessions with peat and natural forests. We urge the government to involve local communities, settle land claims and, as they appear to be doing with this agreement, and to reallocate all remaining undeveloped peatlands and natural forests to restoration/conservation areas.

Finally, this project is a great example of why, before they package carbon as a commodity, private carbon traders should adopt fundamental social and environmental safeguards and require their clients to verify that they’re not involved in the destruction of peatlands and natural forests across all their land holdings.

Thought the jury’s still out on how this project will land- given APP’s track record of deception, corruption and destruction- don’t hold your breath.

Can you hear me??

Well, I hope you can hear me.

Hi Everybody! My name is Tiki. My friends call me Tiki the Tiny Tiger because I’m the smallest tiger cub in the whole wide world!

Will you be my friend?

They call me Tiki the Tiny Tiger because there are only five species of tigers left in the world, and Sumatran Tiger cubs are the smallest out of all of them. That’s right: since I’m a lil’ Sumatran tiger cub, that makes me the smallest, cutest tiger in the whole wide world. Now, I’m the new spokestiger for the Rainforest-Free Paper campaign with all my new friends at Rainforest Action Network. Gosh, those sure are some nice, smart people over at RAN! They said if I type this blog that I could meet more people that will want to help save my rainforest home.

There is something else tiny about Sumatran Tigers: our numbers. This makes me soooo sad but there are only 500 Sumatran Tigers left in the rainforest! Every day these big, loud, scary machines come and chop down our rainforest trees. Then we have less space to live in and find food, so my tiger species is great danger of going extinct… nooooooooo!

I just don’t know why those machines are cutting down the trees- me and my friends live here! I heard that people are taking some of these trees and turning them into paper for books. Now even though tiny tigers don’t read a whole lot, we still love books. We shouldn’t have to choose between books and rainforests… that’s silly!

My friends at Rainforest Action Network said they will start talking to ‘publishers’, the people who make books- and give them a chance to change their bad, rainforest-destroying habits. If they don’t, we have to get together and RAWR for the rainforests. Sometimes, some grow-ups don’t hear me roaring at all. But I met a lot of cool kids who can hear me, and they roar really load. At RAN, I even met some RAWRING grown-ups! Will you RAWR with me too?

Visit www.TikiTheTiger.com and you can be my friend on Facebook and Twitter. This whole world wide spider, i mean, world wide web makes it really easy to stay in touch with the whole wide world. And right now, that’s a great thing because I need the whole wide world to RAWR for rainforests with me!

Thank you for being my friend. Let’s save my rainforest home!

Love, Tiki

Responding to the movements against Sinar Mas, Cargill also made an announcement on Sinar Mas last week; unfortunately Cargill chose to delay action and pass the burden of responsibility to the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil rather than live up to their own corporate responsibility statements and act immediately to remove Sinar Mas’ dirty and dangerous palm oil from their supply chain.

Kraft, Unilever, and Sainsbury’s have also ended their direct palm oil contracts with Sinar Mas yet Cargill continues to stand behind their longstanding relationship with Sinar Mas. As palm oil production destroys forests, endangers forest peoples, and threatens the global climate, Cargill has met calls from Rainforest Action Network to end their support of Sinar Mas with stonewalling, inaction, and silence. The company has refused to disclose the size of their palm oil contract with the Indonesian multinational, all the while maintaining that they are committed to transparency and sustainability.

The evidence out against Sinar Mas is known, but perhaps the palm oil Cargill buys from Sinar Mas and resells in Europe and the US is just too profitable, or Cargill does not truly care about Indonesia’s forests, or they are not concerned about the underlying sustainability of the palm oil industry. Whatever the reason, Cargill’s lack of action is unacceptable and violates their own commitments to sustainable production and environmental stewardship.

Sinar Mas has the world's largest landbank for palm oil production - much of it threatened rainforests

Kraft, Nestle, and Unilever are all Cargill customers, and until Cargill removes Sinar Mas palm oil from their supply chain, these companies will not be able to live up to their very public commitments to disassociate with Sinar Mas. Under significant pressure from this powerful group of companies, Cargill last week finally made an announcement regarding Sinar Mas:

“If the RSPO validates the allegations of improper land conversion or illegal planting in deep peat land as alleged in the Greenpeace report and Sinar Mas does not take corrective action, we will delist them.”

This public statement was long overdue, but falls far short of the actions of Cargill’s customers and peers. Rather than cancel with a dirty and dangerous supplier, Cargill has passed the burden of responsibility to a powerless, controversial, and politically compromised Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) – an initiative of palm oil producers, traders, buyers, and NGOs.

Unlike other companies that took unilateral action, Cargill is hoping to hide behind the decisions of the RSPO, who have up to this point been unable to hold their members accountable for unsustainable and destructive production practices.  And then the clause ‘Corrective Action’ – Sinar Mas has been destroying rainforests for at least 20 years, and their wood pulp arm, Asia Pulp and Paper, is such an egregious rainforest destroyer that almost all the major US outlets of paper and cardboard have canceled their contracts with Sinar Mas (Office Depot, Unisource, Target, etc). Unilever conducted an expensive audit of Sinar Mas’ impacts, a publicly available document of Sinar Mas’ destruction, and NGOs have released countless reports documenting Sinar Mas’ actions on the ground.

Are we to believe, as Cargill tells us, that the allegations against Sinar Mas are still unproven and that Sinar Mas can take corrective action to gain back Cargill’s and their customers’ trust?

The time is now for Cargill to face up to their responsibility as a major palm oil producer, trader, and supplier and eliminate Sinar Mas palm oil from their supply chain and chain of custody. Today. Without statements passing on responsibility to powerless trade groups, and without any if’s, but’s, or when’s.

Today, on the way to a meeting with the local NGO Elang, I passed villagers from the Kampar Peninsula, a carbon-rich and biodiverse ecoystem that is under attack by Sinar Mas’ oil palm operations and their timber division Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), on a hunger strike.

In front of the provincial parliament building, a group of men and women from the village of Kijang Kejo have set up a plastic tarp and banner, announcing to Riau’s elected officials that they will not eat until the oil palm plantation PT Arindo Tri Sejahtera, who stole their land and then paid thugs to kill three of their family members, is brought to justice.

10 days into their hunger strike, the villagers are pale and weak, sleeping while motor bikes and buses fly by them on the road. They told me they have not been able to meet with any members of the provincial government, and were not sure how much longer they could last without food.

The group that owns this particular plantation, Surya Dumai, might be on the nastier end of the scale of dirty, dangerous, and destructive oil palm and timber companies, but this is how the resource extraction game is played here in Riau, Sumatra; buy the military, government, and media and trample any local people that dare to stand up for their rights.

APP and Sinar Mas have been shown to violate Indonesian law and human rights, but with the authorities in their pocket, it is us, the consumers of timber and palm oil, that must demand  producers respect forests and the people who inhabit them.

David Gilbert is a Research Fellow at RAN. He has worked in the tropical forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, with a special focus on forest conservation and indigenous rights. He can be reached at davidgilbert@ran.org

TOWARDS RAPP COMPANY (APRIL)

Regarding: UPHOLDING TELUK MERANTI COMMUNITY RIGHTS

To the Honourable,

President Director of RAPP company (April)

With this, the community of Teluk Meranti subdistrict, based on our needs to the land located across the river or land intended to become a part of your company’s operational area, declares that it: REJECTS THE PRESENCE OF THE RAPP COMPANY.

This is done with regard to the below considerations:

1. The land is to be retained for our grandchildren’s future
2. Experiences by other surrounding villages or areas where RAPP company has operated which have impacted negatively on the local community’s rights
3. It has caused loss of agricultural and horticultural land belonging to the community
4. The community will lose the source of its livelihood (economic, social and cultural) from the forest which will be converted to an industrial timber plantation

We, the community of Teluk Meranti, have inhabited and utilised this area in a wise and traditional way far preceeding Indonesia’s independence.

Thus concludes this rejection letter, made with great consideration so that unwanted problems will be avoided in the future.

Respectfully yours,

The community of Teluk Meranti

My read of the announcement raises the question of whether his decision was made voluntarily or under pressure stemming from recent controversies?

Those more plugged in to the internal dynamics of the international office may have a more authoritative take, but this smells like a squeeze play to me.

Last month, the international office moved to revoke a certificate issued to Asia Pulp and Paper–the infamous Indonesian logger–during an investigation into the certificate by the Wall Street Journal. Actually, the article indicates that Liedeker himself “rescinded the FSC’s approval of APP products at the same time he proposed a tightening of the FSC’s rules.”

Why quit just after proposing new rules? One way or another it seems that he’s being pushed by politics.

The quote’s accurate, but incomplete. It’s important to fend off half-baked industry schemes like the SFI, but the more crucial point is that the FSC must improve to remain a credible tool for conserving forests.

The worth of any market standard (think Organic, Fair Trade, Made in the USA), boils down to whether its value to buyers can ultimately reward good guys for doing good and punish bad guys for not getting on board.

Storm clouds are gathering above the FSC because that formula is breaking down. Demand for FSC is through the roof, but the big buyers won’t offer a premium–only a preference. Even so, loggers from Borneo to the Boreal are clamoring for the thin market advantage. Unfortunately, there’s too few good guys to fill the shelves with FSC product. The recent certification and subsequent de-certification of Indonesia’s Asia Pulp and Paper signals severe instability in a system struggling to meet rising demand without sacrificing credibility.

Some say these signals are death knells. Last year, several prominent forest activists including one founding member of the FSC launched FSC-Watch.org as a clearing house for complaints about the program. Two weeks ago, Glenn Barry’s Ecological Internet supporters filled RAN’s inboxes with more than 3000 emails critical of our support of the FSC.

To remain credible, FSC needs to rebuild its value promise–and fast. Today, FSC’s US affiliate faces an opportunity to begin doing just that. Recent evaluations led by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation concluded that FSC certification might be a viable option for National Forests. Existing rules at FSC make that option out of the question until it can build consensus around how to go about it.

While the findings themselves are interesting, more important will be how effectively FSC responds to the spectrum of advocates pulling the system from opposite ends. Multinational retailers and loggers eager to green their image want access to more wood with a green stamp. Vocal critics inside and out don’t want any logging in National Forests, much less the legitimacy of an FSC stamp. While not a formal policy per se, RAN has consistently pushed the FSC toward conservation of all intact forest landscapes, biologically appropriate restoration and respect for the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous communities wherever it certifies.

If it’s to remain relevant, FSC needs to seize opportunities offered by challenges like the current debate over National Forests as an opportunity to raise public awareness, strengthen its governance, rebuild flagging consensus among its members and reestablish itself as a credible tool for conserving forests. Alternatively, the FSC will be to forestry what betamax was to video recording—better in quality, but virtually irrelevant.